The smell of macaroni [part 3]

“While vision did play an important role in the understanding of both the macaroni as a phenomenon and the pleasure garden as a space, to focus on vision, to the exclusion of other senses and embodiment, is to miss an important means of understanding both macaronis and pleasure gardens. We must understand the pleasure gardens and macaronis as multi-sensory. In particular, I show that olfaction was a crucial means of understanding the macaroni’s place within the pleasure gardens. Pleasure gardens were a place of sensory pleasures and dangers where one was expected to, and attempted to, cultivate one’s senses in particular ways. Macaronis were frequently described in terms of their perfumes and essences, and yet none of the extensive work on macaronis has interrogated this.”